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The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced a $500,000 Challenge Grant to Humanities Texas to endow our signature professional development program for the state's classroom teachers.

Throughout the year, Humanities Texas holds workshops and institutes that offer teachers the opportunity to study with some of the nation's leading humanities scholars, exploring topics at the heart of the state's social studies and language arts curricula. These programs provide new teachers in low-performing schools with content and teaching strategies for engaging students in the subjects of U.S. history, Texas history, government, and language arts. To date, Humanities Texas has conducted 130 workshops and institutes throughout the state.

"NEH provides support for projects across America that preserve our heritage, promote scholarly discoveries and make the best of America’s humanities ideas available to all Americans," said NEH Chairman William D. Adams.

"We deeply appreciate NEH's important investment in a program that will ultimately benefit thousands of Texas teachers and hundreds of thousands of students," said Michael L. Gillette, executive director of Humanities Texas.

The Challenge Grant, with a required match of $1.5 million, will enable Humanities Texas to assist greater numbers of Texas educators and to expand its teacher programs to more communities statewide.

Announced on December 10, 2015, the award marks an important milestone in Humanities Texas's capital campaign to establish an endowment for all of our programs. Funds from a 2007 NEH Challenge Grant were instrumental in our previous capital campaign to restore the Byrne-Reed House, Humanities Texas's headquarters in downtown Austin.